In Fact, One Vice Is Set Over Against
Another; And Thus, Something Like A Balance Is Obtained.
The women
have but little virtue, but then the jealousy of their husbands is
extreme, and their revenge deadly and almost certain.
A few inches
of cold steel has been the punishment of many an unwary man, who has
been guilty, perhaps, of nothing more than indiscretion of manner.
The difficulties of the attempt are numerous, and the consequences
of discovery fatal. With the unmarried women, too, great watchfulness
is used. The main object of the parents is to marry their daughters
well, and to this, the slightest slip would be fatal. The sharp eyes
of a dueña, and the cold steel of a father or brother, are a protection
which the characters of most of them - men and women - render by no means
useless; for the very men who would lay down their lives to avenge the
dishonor of their own family, would risk the same lives to complete
the dishonor of another.
Of the poor Indians, very little care is taken. The priests,
indeed, at the missions, are said to keep them very strictly,
and some rules are usually made by the alcaldes to punish their
misconduct; but it all amounts to but little. Indeed, to show the
entire want of any sense of morality or domestic duty among them,
I have frequently known an Indian to bring his wife, to whom he
was lawfully married in the church, down to the beach, and carry
her back again, dividing with her the money which she had got
from the sailors. If any of the girls were discovered by the
alcalde to be open evil-livers, they were whipped, and kept at
work sweeping the square of the presidio, and carrying mud and
bricks for the buildings; yet a few reáls would generally buy
them off. Intemperance, too, is a common vice among the Indians.
The Spaniards, on the contrary, are very abstemious, and I do not
remember ever having seen a Spaniard intoxicated.
Such are the people who inhabit a country embracing four or five
hundred miles of sea-coast, with several good harbors; with fine
forests in the north; the waters filled with fish, and the plains
covered with thousands of herds of cattle; blessed with a climate,
than which there can be no better in the world; free from all
manner of diseases, whether epidemic or endemic; and with a soil
in which corn yields from seventy to eighty fold. In the hands
of an enterprising people, what a country this might be! we are
ready to say. Yet how long would a people remain so, in such a
country? The Americans (as those from the United States are
called) and Englishmen, who are fast filling up the principal
towns, and getting the trade into their hands, are indeed more
industrious and effective than the Spaniards; yet their children
are brought up Spaniards, in every respect, and if the "California
fever" (laziness) spares the first generation, it always attacks
the second.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 135 of 324
Words from 69986 to 70499
of 170236
